Nightmare
by sentient1212
Summary: Jack experiences what's real ... and what's not.


NIGHTMARE

It was the worst nightmare of his life, and when Jack awoke with the sweat pouring off him he still couldn't shake it. All the things he'd experienced, all the things he'd survived, paled in comparison. All the things, of all things, to imagine: being a celebrity, a movie star.

He'd dreamed he was an actor, some man named Keith or something like that who portrayed a secret agent on TV, a super-duper man whose exploits so far outdid his own that he was a wimp by comparison. He shook his head, trying to knock the memory loose and away, but it stayed with him.

As he climbed out of bed clad in his sweat pants and t-shirt and headed for the bathroom he still couldn't get it out of his head. This man, this Keith – no, that wasn't it – Reefer? no, that was wrong, too – lived some kind of hyper-life, something Jack could never survive. All those things he did on that show – Jack laughed out loud. Boy, did those writers over-do things. If they ever found out what it was like to be a counter-terrorism agent – they couldn't even get that right, it wasn't counter-terrorist – they'd never get a show on the air. It was mostly reading and analyzing data, hell, it was almost always reading and analyzing, although he'd done far more field missions than Hollywood could ever imagine – how'd they find out about the agency, anyhow? – and they would never believe the firepower he carried with him all the time. Their plots were preposterous. He'd never cut off somebody's head with a hacksaw, it would take months to even requisition one. God, he laughed to himself, I'd love to tell the guys about that one, but they'd send me for a psych exam if I did. And a switch that could melt down all the reactors? What jerks. Just take the computers off-line. How stupid can the public be to watch that sh!t?

The idea hit him like a bullet. Why was he thinking like this? It was just a stupid dream. He poured his first mug of coffee and started to settle down with the paper, but he was drawn to the laptop that sat on the desk in the corner of the kitchen. Feeling foolish he accessed the web, and sure enough there was a site, complete with a picture of the super agent he'd dreamed of. It looked just like him. He was thrown. What the fck...?

Then it penetrated – it wasn't a dream, he'd watched a TV show last night, before the hockey game started. Before the Leafs lost yet again, damn them. But what the fck?

He couldn't get away from the computer. He went to link after link, Googling everything he could find, and something caught his eye. There he was, his look-alike, this Keith guy – no, it was Keifer, that was it – was getting divorced. Well, that sounded like Hollywood. Jack himself was divorced, you couldn't mix what he did with a normal family life, most of the people at the agency were either divorced, alcoholics, or both – and he'd opted to stay single since he'd split from his wife, although he had company in his bed whenever he wanted it, which was pretty often, he acknowledged with an inward smile. Loneliness had never been his problem, women seemed to find him attractive enough, and over the years his reticence about his work had seemed to take on an air of mystery that they found compelling. This fictitious Jack guy – how had they given the TV character the same name? – he was divorced, no, widowed, with a head-strong kid – he'd had a failed marriage. The writers got that part right, too, he thought with a shake of his head. Creepy, or did they just use the divorce statistics?

The traffic was a sonofabitch that morning, no exception, Jack thought as he crawled along in his black SUV, and as the morning talk showed played on the radio in the background he forced himself to focus on the work that awaited him. More analysis, trying to pick up a thread from the chatter that had started last week about some Middle Eastern group that seemed to be planning something, but they didn't yet know what. And something even more vague about a possible train wreck. The FBI should be handling that one, he mused, but no, they'll hand that off to us, too, like they do with everything. That way they don't get blamed when sh!t happens.

More of the same, he thought as he sipped more coffee from his travel mug, getting a start on his continuous caffeine intake, wondering if this would be another 24-hour day with barely enough time to take a leak, probably spent at his desk trying to analyze the data stream that crossed it, working to make sense of the intel that came in from Langley and NSA, damning the suits in DC who didn't know how to use their satellites and other gizmos to maximize their capabilities, always leaving things to their field agents to clean up when they failed to do their own jobs, never giving them all the intelligence they needed to plan their ops properly. Always making the ops guys search for the key that would help them unravel whatever the bad guys were planning, waiting too long before deciding that a field mission would be necessary to get the job done. Jack had to work with the suits, 'cause they never wanted to hand things off to the field agents until it was too late, they always thought that if they just had that final piece of data they could head things off, that the policy wonks could use the intel to defuse a situation so no one would have to get their hands dirty, waiting too long so it made the ops guys' jobs harder than they had to be. Like they wanted to put Jack and his people out of a job. Jack snorted. Yeah, like that was possible. Like the world works that way.

As he waved to the security guard at the entrance and edged into his parking spot he was preoccupied with the data he'd evaluated the day before, and he couldn't help but contrast it with the show he'd seen. Their plots sometimes were too close for comfort, but it had to be their over-active imaginations, they must just be lucky. There was no way they could really know what went on in Jack's super-secret agency – was there? Nah, he thought, we'd have to have a leak the size of the Grand Canyon for this stuff to get out. Still...

His thoughts stayed with what he'd seen the night before. Everything that took place in an hour on TV would take CTU sometimes an entire week to do. Nothing worked that fast in real life, nothing. When he'd had to stop the virus he'd had three days. Saunders hadn't expected CTU to respond instantly; he'd been an agent, he knew things couldn't happen that fast, and he wanted his objective accomplished, so he hadn't made unreasonable demands, at least in terms of time. Boy, if the writers of that show ever made up a plot involving something like that, I'd like to see how they did it in a day, he thought. That would be a hoot. And Saunders hadn't demanded that Jack kill his boss, stuff like that didn't happen in real life. Although maybe that wouldn't be so bad, he let himself dryly think. Chappelle could be such a jerk. And that would really shake things up. But no, President Palmer didn't have the brass ones to make a decision like that. The fictional president, the one on TV, yeah the writers showed him as strong and decisive, but not the one the voters had chosen. He'd never have the balls for it. But the writers could do whatever they wanted, even come up with the most outlandish story lines. Stuff that never occurred in the real world. But who knew what scripts they were writing for future shows?

CTU was as busy as usual when he walked in and headed up to his office, the comms people on the floor busy clacking at their computers, the CTU personnel – the real ones, not their TV counterparts – already hard at work – Jesus, he thought suddenly, the writers know all about them! – Chloe with her usual unbelievably indescribable can't-work-and-play-well-with-others personality, Edgar's arrested-development self not far behind, Sarah, ready to climb on anyone's back or into anyone's bed to get ahead, and all the myriad of other malcontents that it was Jack's job to ride herd on – God, where did CTU get all these misfits? What the hell do their want ads look like, anyway? "Are you a social misfit with amazing computer skills? Do you want a job where your talents will be appreciated, and you can be totally obnoxious? Moles welcome. Call CTU at 555-1234"?

He was brought back again to the TV show when he saw Tony's coffee mug, the one with the logo of the LA Dodgers. Ha, Jack thought, at least it's not the Cubs, the writers blew that one. But that was eerie, too. How'd they know he had a special mug? Hell, how'd they know about Tony?

Kiefer, shmeefer – he had to shake this. He had work to do. He didn't realize Nina had followed him up the stairs until he'd put his coffee down on his desk and turned around to hang up his jacket and he'd seen her standing there, her seductive eyes saying everything. He hadn't wanted their office fling to turn into anything more, but it had – at least to her. God, she was possessive, and now what was he supposed to do? He wanted to be free, to sleep around, he liked variety, and she wanted – him. To herself. Damn, you don't sh!t where you eat, he thought, and now what do I do. Even that Jack guy on TV had had a problem with it. The idea caught him up short. They even had Nina on the show, and they knew about their affair. But they portrayed her as a mole, and he knew they had that part wrong. He trusted her completely, and she'd proven him right every time. Yet – what the hell was going on?

He asked her if anything new had come in overnight, and she told him no. Then when he asked her what she wanted she came up with a bullsh!t answer. She just wanted to be with him, obviously, and they both knew it.

Jack wanted to get to work, but the thought of the TV show – the 'other' Jack – kept intruding. How the hell had Fox found out about the agency, let alone about him? The place was top-secret, yet they knew too many details, right down to the names of the employees and the lay-out of the place. At least they don't know everything, he tried to comfort himself. They don't know about the real problems we've had with moles. They've nailed the wrong people as traitors. A thought caught him up short. At least, not yet. He'd seen on the 'net that the show had been renewed for another season. Who knew what plot that would have? What would that 'Jack' have to do to save the world? He snorted again. Nothing like he'd have to do, that was certain.

He resigned himself to another long day as he reached for one of the many files piled on top of the glass desk in his too-modern office, and he wondered again why they'd given him furniture without drawers. Was it so he couldn't hide things? He'd managed to hide the 'works' from his heroin addiction in his locker before he'd kicked the habit, before CTU had found out about it, they would have thrown him out for sure, but his locker at least hadn't been transparent, and he'd been able to keep it secured. But that brought him back to his non-dream. The producers of the show could never portray their super-agent as someone so flawed; the viewers would never stand for it, they liked their heroes clean. They'd never show their Jack as a junkie. He was safe in that respect.

There were more parallels that hit Jack like waves throughout the day. Intel that was in the files that mimicked the scenes on the TV the night before jumbled together, the techno-babble of the computer geeks he supervised sounded just like the dialogue from the show. The comms people were behind, again, their stacks of colored disks in their matching jewel cases lying around, waiting to be reviewed. God, they used to be competent, he said to himself. Where did we get these people? How the hell am I supposed to get results?

He didn't believe the plots on the TV show, they were too preposterous he reminded himself, the writers, for all their imaginativeness, couldn't know the real threats facing the country. What they'd written for their show was fiction, pure make-believe. Imagine a bunch of Arabs running around LA with a live bomb. Like that could really happen. With all the equipment CTU, NSA and the other agencies had, they could track it and take it, and the plotters, down easily. It was such a ludicrous plot device that he laughed, and thought of another. A secret prison system, kept hidden throughout the country, with war criminals being covertly flown from one to another, with no intel leaking about it. Oh, yeah, DOD would get away with that.

But the laughter died on his lips. Thankfully, the people on TV had no idea what the real Jack Bauer, the real CTU, did to keep the public safe. If they ever did...

George Mason came up the stairs then, looking grim, and Jack girded himself, the unwanted feeling coming to him that again the TV show had gotten things right. George? Of all people? It occurred to him that even he'd been on the show. This was becoming too much. Art was imitating life way too much. But how? This had to stop. The plots on TV were ridiculous, sure, the writers had no idea what CTU really did, the missions it had to accomplish, but the show was too close for comfort. But it was still just make-believe, he consoled himself. No matter what the writers did, the real work of CTU was still secret. And nowhere near as improbable as what they showed on TV.

George quickly filled Jack in. "Jack, there's a rogue nuke in Los Angeles. It's set to go off today."

A totally unbidden thought entered his mind. What was real, and what was a dream? There was a hockey strike, after all. Had he really watched the Leafs last night? Was there such a TV show? Or had he seen himself?


End file.
